


Just for Tonight (Altissian Discretion)

by deathrae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, It is now, M/M, SPOILERS ABOUND, endgame spoilers, implied polyamory, is that a tag?, post-ch9 spoilers, post-game content, umbra-travel content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 01:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9635816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: Umbra lets them go back to before everything started to change. But there's those nagging inconsistencies. Knowledge they're too young to have. Clothing they hadn't bought.The question is, who notices, and who doesn't?





	

Noctis, Ignis learned long ago, was much like a still, dark lake. The surface is slow, languid, opaque and only ruffled by extreme winds of change. But beneath is a startling depth of intense strength and life. When he acts, it is with intensity of feeling, swayed by passion of one sort or another. Never whims of flight or fancy, but always something that warrants, as had become Ignis’ personal joke, royal attention. His manner was that of a lazy, glossy calm, always, in all things, save when spurred to a fit of strong emotion, like the frenzy following an angler’s lure hitting the surface.

Given all this, it was somewhat surprising when Noctis asked for another round of cards while they lounged in their hotel room in the Altissian Leville. When Prompto had cracked his jaw in a telling yawn and mumbled _why?_ Noctis gave one of those easygoing smiles that creased the corners of his eyes.

“I think we should take some hunts tomorrow night. Clear the streets some. And it’ll be easier to stay up tomorrow if we sleep in.”

Ignis knew that meant he would get up at the same time as always to do the laundry and fetch breakfast. He knew it meant an extra few cups of Ebony in the evening to get through the hunts. He knew all that, but he didn’t say anything.

Gladio rumbled. Shrugged. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

“Hell yeah!” Prompto said, all traces of exhaustion gone as he grabbed up the cards and shuffled again.

“Of course,” Ignis added, lest it seem he secretly disapproved. “I’m sure the Altissians would appreciate it.”

Noctis nodded. Smiled. Picked up his cards when Prompto dealt them.

Ignis had the odd but intense impression of something shifting in the deep under that placid surface, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

 

They took three hunts in a row. Noctis tipped the gondoliers so well Ignis started keeping an eye out for potential muggers.

It was getting close to dawn when they found the last in a back alley. His nerves skittered from the third Ebony he’d had but battle soothed him, as it always did. It was a fast-forward freezeframe of focus. The fastest chess game he would ever play, and a game played for keeps.

Prompto’s pistol sounded like cannonfire in close quarters, Gladio’s shield catching claws with screeches of metal. Noctis was a dervish of cape and flashes of gold. In his hand, the King’s blade spun and danced, a flare of light in the darkness.

“Ignis!” Noctis shouted, skittering back out of the way of daemonic limbs. “Instructions!”

He didn’t hesitate. He turned, sheathing his knives and closing his eyes to think, flipping through a mental rolodex of daemons and weaknesses.

“I’ve just the thing,” he said, smug, and flicked a magic flask behind him, straight into the open maw of the creature. It flared, crackled, and the daemon collapsed, flickering into photophilic specks of nothingness. He dusted off his hands and grinned when Prompto cheered, smiled into the flash of the camera.

“We got a badass over here,” Gladio said, sarcastic, but smirking. Satisfied.

Noctis watched him. Just _watched_ , silent, with something flickering in his eyes like flashes of moonlight on the surface of water.

They prowled the path back to the gondola in the deep blue of pre-dawn, winding their way through an elegant stone corridor like a pack of dogs. Ignis stood just behind and to the left of Noctis, the others a few paces ahead. They watched for oncoming traffic or problems. He kept his ear open behind them, to make sure they weren’t being followed.

“Gladio. Prompto.”

Ignis pulled up short when Noctis did. The others turned around.

“Yeah?” Prompto said. He yawned. “What’s up?”

“You two go on ahead. We’ll catch the next one and meet you at the room.”

Gladio frowned. Looked to Ignis. Truthfully, Ignis was equally confused, but he kept his face passive and nodded. He’d handle it. Whatever _it_ was.

“Sure,” Gladio said, and shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t stay out too late,” he said, with a snort. Daylight was just peeking over the horizon.

Noctis nodded, and watched as Prompto followed into the gondola, and then as they swept out into the canal. The low boat slid away, silent and elegant as a swan.

After a moment of silence that was confusing, if companionable, Noctis turned aside and stepped back toward the corridor, out of sightlines from the cafe nearby.

“Something on your mind, Noct?” Ignis asked, as he followed.

Firm hands found Ignis’ shoulders. Noctis bodily tugged him to the side and then shoved, so that Ignis fell back onto a decoratively carved concrete bench. He hit the stone and then the brick behind him with a low grunt, but before he could open his mouth to protest Noctis’ mouth was on his, firm and intense and— and _something_. Here was the passion, the deepest part of the lake.

But why now? Why like this?

Ignis let Noctis take the lead, responding with all the warmth and care he could muster. It had been some time since Noctis had asked for this, and Ignis found himself simultaneously pleased and bewildered by the sudden need for it. It felt like it had been years, not—what, months, perhaps?

Noctis settled in Ignis’ lap, knees braced on either side of him on the concrete. He broke away with a shuddering, sharp breath and traced his fingers across Ignis’ face. He touched along the arm of his glasses, the curve of his cheekbone. Brushed his thumb up the slope of Ignis’ nose.

“Noctis?” Ignis said, soft, using his full name with the breathless reverence it warranted.

“Please,” Noctis breathed. “Tell me you remember.”

Ignis’ brow furrowed, casting his thoughts across the available data. Remember what, the hunt? The mission they had waiting for them in Accordo at large? The fact that this— this closeness, this contact, was something that they shared, without obligation, without entanglement, companionable despite what others might have thought, if they had known exactly what it was the Prince and his advisor did behind closed doors when political loneliness felt like a sucking darkness?

“In the fight,” Noctis said, as if he understood Ignis’ silence as the confusion it was. “It was like you remembered. Look at what you’re wearing. Ignis, _please_.”

Ignis thought back to the fight, thought of the effortless throw without so much as a backward glance, as if he had merely _known_ , as if he had only needed to _listen_ to know where to put the flask. He looked down at the brocade of his Kingsglaive overcoat. The coat he would’ve sworn was still in a box in the trunk of the Regalia.

_Umbra_.

His vision blurred, blackened momentarily, as his mind tried to reconcile the present—no, now it was the future?—with the past. For a terrifying moment both timelines were real. He was older, harder, his body lean with a harsh and sunless life, and furiously, patently blind, his vision a fluctuating, almost incomprehensible swirl of shades of black and darkest grey, his left eye closed and his right only partially open. All at once, though, he was younger, softer, fit but out of choice and a dogged fight against the empire. The world was at worst, blurry, without lenses, and at best, crystalline and rich and real.

The flesh around his left eye ached with remembered (foreseen?) pain, then settled, his vision intact. Of _course_. The coats, the battle-synergy that even now, even in Accordo, their team had not yet truly perfected. That’s why they had time to spare. That’s why they had dallied for days in the depths of Costlemark Tower. Why they had fetched stone after stone for Dino, photograph after photograph for the Meteor publisher. Why they had spent weeks hunting all sorts of creatures across Cleigne and Duscae, slaying monster and daemon alike.

_That_ was why they weren’t frantically searching for Luna.

A pang stole through his chest like a thief. Grief. Loss. Of losing Luna, of nearly losing Noctis to his mourning, of nearly losing Gladio to his own stubbornness and frustration in the face of a world rapidly changing without asking him for permission. Of nearly losing Prompto to agents of his own tortured past. Grief for every hunter killed in the ten years of darkness. Grief for those who died in cramped refugee housing in Lestallum while even those who had never cared much for the Oracle prayed blindly, hopelessly, for salvation.

Grief, for the sound of the echo of Ardyn’s departing footsteps washed out by Prompto shouting, _screaming_ , banging his fists against the surface of the Crystal, pleading with Noctis to just wake up.

“I remember, your majesty,” he said, keeping his voice to a soft, rumbled murmur, just in case someone else might try to listen. Gods, but he remembered everything. He remembered every day of the long years without a King, without the warmth of sunlight, _true_ sunlight, not the false cold heat of fluorescent floodlights that kept daemons away from Hammerhead. “I remember.”

Noctis _breathed_ , a sound of relief perhaps, and he pressed his forehead to Ignis’, fingers curling around Ignis’ ears to hold him close. “I thought... maybe...”

Ignis smiled. “Thought only you could see the truth? I may be a blind man, but even _I_ can see that, Highness,” he said.

“Oh shut up,” he said, and for a moment, just a moment, he sounded his age. He sounded _old_. Tired. “You can, right? See?”

“I drove us halfway across Leide a few days ago, I assure you I would have said something could I not.”

Noctis gave an uncomfortable chuckle, then kissed the bridge of Ignis’ nose where he could half-feel the remembered scar. “Right.”

For a moment, Noctis said nothing, his body light but _real_ where he sat on Ignis’ knees. Ignis slid his hands to Noctis’ knees to hold him steady.

“Are you alright?” he asked, keeping his voice to that low, soft tone. There was something brimming in him, simmering like a storm, and Ignis knew him too well not to feel it.

“No,” Noctis said, and shut his eyes, tight. He kissed Ignis again, hard, searching, like it hurt to be separated even by several inches. Ignis’ coffee-fueled nerves rattled in his ears, sharp and too loud. He missed this, he realized. It felt strange, to think it. “I was ready,” Noctis said quietly. “I was. I accepted it. I do accept it. But now..."

Ignis pressed his nose to Noctis’ skin, tracing the hollow of his cheek. “I know.”

Noctis hissed out a breath, almost a laugh. “Gladio would say you’re too soft on me.”

“Maybe I am,” Ignis said, considering it. “But for now, Umbra offers you a moment’s reprieve.”

Noctis nodded. Listening to him. Heeding him. It was almost strange, how different Noctis the King could be from Noctis the Prince.

Ignis pressed his lips, feather-light, to Noctis’ again. “That night will come, when we go back and retake the Crown City. But for now. For now, we’re here, and there’s work to be done.”

Noctis nodded. “There’s good we can do before it all goes wrong.”

“Mm.” Ignis looked up at his prince—his _king_. “So tonight. Just for tonight, at least. You can have this.”


End file.
